‘How the Modern Girl Attains Strength and Grace’: the Girl's Own Paper,sport and the discipline of the female body, 1914–1956

In the first half of the twentieth century there was a great deal of debate about increasing female participation in sporting activities, and changes to the female sporting body and the way in which it was displayed. Magazines for girls played a key role in the construction of the female body, and in mediating for their readers a range of diverse views on the meaning, purpose and benefits or dangers of female physical culture. This article explores the way in which one periodical, the Girl's Own Paper (GOP), disseminated those discourses and allowed its readers to explore different viewpoints. It argues that the way in which GOP presented sport for girls and women was contingent upon the age of the intended readership, and that the coverage of sport within the paper reached a peak in the 1930s when the target readership was aged 12 to 16.     

SCIENTIFIC FACT AND VALUE IN U.S. OCEAN DUMPING POLICY

Controversy among scientists over appropriate use of the ocean for waste disposal impedes U.S. policy in this area. The problem arises in part because scientific uncertainty over the fate and effects of wastes released into the ocean requires a large element of judgment, and hence value, when the uncertain science is applied to policy. Scientists often supply that judgment and so impose their values, though seldom explicitly, on policy. Further, science often determines policy because many perceive it as an objective basis for decisionmaking and so less subject to the debate that arises from weighing public preferences in policymaking. Thus, scientists' values rather than the public's come to set policy. The resulting policy may elevate one expert's values over another's. Then as values and so interpretation of science shift, policy changes. Or, as in the case now with arguments over the ocean's ability to assimilate many anthropogenic wastes, conflicting science, really conflicting values, results in an agreement and policy inertia. These problems are partially circumvented when scientists make the nonscientific factors behind their reasoning clear. These factors may then be evaluated by the public along with the supporting scientific evidence. Thus, weighing the welfare of society rather than resolving conflicts among scientists becomes the focus of policy.     

The Pendleton Riot: a political sociology

Two unlikely legislative bedfellows have recently defined a new terrain upon which conflicting political approaches to the criminalisation of ‘precarious’ (Lea, 2013) young people are being played out.     

Under construction: Brain formation, culpability, and the criminal justice system

Should adolescents be held as culpable for their behavior as adults? Adolescence is a tumultuous time, full of change and transformation. This paper examines the development of brain functions and cognitive capabilities of teenagers. It explores the effect of alcohol use on brain development and the fundamental cognitive differences between adolescents and adults. This knowledge, coupled with the assessment of developmental perspective, suggests that the adultification of youth (or waiver to adult court) is unduly harsh for youth whose brains have not fully formed.